Monday, June 07, 2004

What this is all about

For the second year I am spending a week at a Benedictine Monastery as part of my work toward a master’s degree in theology at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. As was the case last year, I am keeping a journal on-line, through this weblog (“blog”). If you are interested in my experiences from last year, click on this link from June 2003, and you can read all about it.

Part of the class requirement is that I keep this journal, but because I have been through this once, my journal will be slightly different this year. Last year the journal dealt with my conceptions of monastic live and how I might apply the lessons learned here in my daily life. While that continues to remain something for me to think about, I’m going to have a different emphasis this year. My work this year will be about community and Benedictine life.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the purpose of the church in Christian life and about the formation of community. Much of this is the result of a class I took last semester on “church in its social context” which involved me doing a study of a congregation. I was fortunate to get permission to study my own church, First Baptist Church of Galveston, and in the course of the study began to think about the theological issues involved in church life. I’ll be spelling out in more detail what those issues are for me in a later post, but I wanted to set the whole thing up early. I’ll also be adding additional information as I think of things about Benedictine life that interest me. I hope this blog can be a blessing to you. And if you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

About me and this blog

I am David Whidden, a doctoral student in systematic theology at SMU. You may email me at dwhidden -at- smu -dot- edu.

This blog is dedicated to my experiences at St. Gregory's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery located in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Each time I visit the monastery I record my thoughts and experiences with respect to monasticism and Christianity.

**Note: to get the full range of my thoughts and development with regard to monastic life it is best to start at the very beginning in 2003 and work your way forward in time. The archives are below - start there.**